Defixio tablets: curses inscribed in lead

Thin sheets of lead, inscribed with a stylus, rolled up, sometimes pierced with a nail and placed in a tomb or a well: this is how defixio tablets appear, among the most direct documents of ancient magic. The Greeks called them katadesmoi, «bindings»; the Romans defixiones, from the verb defigere, «to nail down, to fix». More than a thousand have been found across the Mediterranean world, from Sicily to Britain.

Greek origins

The oldest examples date to the sixth and fifth centuries BC and come from Greek Sicily, especially Selinous, and from Attica. The earliest texts are very simple: often they contain only the name of the person to be «bound», sometimes with a verb. Over time the formulas grow longer and call upon underworld deities such as chthonic Hermes, Persephone and Hecate.

Literary sources also know the practice. Plato, in the Republic and the Laws, mentions seers and itinerant priests who offered to harm an enemy with bindings and incantations, and proposes punishing those who used them. The fact that a philosopher spoke of it as a widespread social phenomenon shows how deeply rooted it was in the everyday life of Greek cities.

The reasons for the curses

The tablets almost always arise from situations of conflict. Many concern lawsuits: the writer asked that the opponent lose speech or memory before the judges. Others concern commercial rivalry, thwarted love and sporting contests. In the imperial age there are many against charioteers and horses of the circus races, found above all in North Africa, at Carthage and Hadrumetum.

In Britain, at the hot-spring sanctuary of Bath, ancient Aquae Sulis, about one hundred and thirty tablets have been recovered, published by Roger Tomlin in 1988. Most of them concern thefts: the victim entrusted the stolen object, a cloak, a ring, a few coins, to the goddess Sulis Minerva and asked her to punish the thief. They are also precious documents for the spoken Latin of the provinces.

Collections, studies and a famous case

The scholarly study of defixiones began at the end of the nineteenth century. Richard Wünsch published the Attic tablets in 1897, and Auguste Audollent in 1904 a large collection entitled Defixionum tabellae, bringing together the Greek and Latin texts then known. Since then new discoveries, in Greece, Italy, Spain and Germany, have greatly enlarged the corpus.

Curses also appear in high history. Tacitus, in the Annals, relates that during the illness of Germanicus, who died at Antioch in AD 19, human remains, spells and lead tablets inscribed with his name were found in his house. The episode, reported as suspected sorcery, fuelled the accusations against the governor Piso and shows how far the fear of defixio reached even the Roman elite.

Today defixio tablets are studied by epigraphers, social historians and linguists. They reveal a side of ancient life that official literature tends to hide: anger, jealousy, the fear of losing a case or a possession. Lead, a cold and heavy metal associated with the world of the dead, has preserved for us the words of men and women who would otherwise have left no trace.